Monday, December 29, 2014

What is EVE? I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked that
simple three word question… and it always left me standing there, waiting for the
flies to just land in my open mouth… I never had a good short, to the point
answer. Because EVE is not simple, short or to the point... whateverthehell it
is.

It’s a game, right? Oh it’s a game alright… and it’s an MMO and an
MMORPG too for some… it’s a persistent virtual world and a personal virtual
life… it’s a gankers paradise and the haunt of risk adverse OCD miners and Industry
spreadsheet geeks and Market mavens… It’s an experience that simply MUST be shared
with friends and thousands more and a Hermit’s dream, it’s a single shard
universe, and a lonely desolate wormhole system… it’s a Harsh Mistress and a Gentle Beauty… an exotic sheer bikini clad Lover, and a triple 1600mm Tritanium plated Bitch.

It is all this and so much more… but it is NOT easy nor is it simple…
to play, to live in, to fly in and to die in, to define or to explain.

But, over the last few weeks, I have found my personal short-simple-to-the-point
answer…EVE is Fun… and as far as I am concerned, if it’s not fun for you… yer
doing it wrong.

You see defining and or explaining EVE for many stems from a
desire for our friends and family to understand this our collective hobby. We
who enjoy it get so much out of it… partly because EVE IS horrendously complex
and hard to learn. It is hard to explain a ‘game’ that can be so very extremely
harsh and unforgiving. Those of us who love it do so BECAUSE it is ALL of the
above… and one other thing… we have FUN doing all of it, even the boring,
painful, shitty stuff.

This thought has been gelling in me since I read Wilhelm Arcturus’s
post, This
is EVE and EVE is Different over on The
Ancient Gaming Noob. I don’t really follow TAGN ‘closely’ because he is a
nullsec player and I could not care less about nullsuc, and his blog also
covers a lot of WoW and such and so I have to pick and choose what to read
over there… Please understand I’m not dissin’ his blog or playstyle, I’m just
picky and I don’t play WoW so a lot of it means Na-da to me is all. But he is also
an EVE player and very often has insights and a depth to our game that I would
sorely hate to miss… so I do keep up with him.

Anyhoo… in this post which was his BB#61 - Origin
State, post… he says a few things that really hit home with me…

“EVE Online will not meet your
expectations.

That isn’t necessarily a bad
thing, but you’re going to come charging in with some ideas in mind and EVE
just isn’t going to line up with them."

And…

“If you look at blogs from people
playing EVE Online… …things can be quite different. Sure, some days we are all talking about the
same thing, like the latest expansion.
But there are times when we clearly aren’t just playing in different
areas of the game, but it seems like we might be playing totally different
games.”

In no other MMO I know of or have heard of is this more true. … it seems like we might be playing totally
different games… because… we are and
yet, we are all still playing EVE. This is the Dichotomy and the Duality, the
Yin and Yang, the Male and Female, the Creation and Destruction that is EVE and
that is a huge part of the human experience.

When all is said and done, I enjoy my time in EVE more than any
other hobby I have ever had. I fly in EVE with my sons… we have a corp that is
our own. We are currently flying with friends we have had for almost 4 years…
and some we just met last week. I have my baddays… and
sometimes I am the badday others’
have… but everyday, bad to best, I look forward to it more, and have more sheer
fun doing it, on par with anything else I have ever had as a hobby. Seeing the
guys on TS, and in the POS… Endy, and‘nipples’… Sov and his “About your fit…”, Tsra and his “Damn, I’m outta arsenic…”, AI and his ”….”
(he’s kinda quiet…), Strigon and his “I just
push F1…”… and all the other guys…

Over the last few weeks I have had wonderful wins! And amazing
losses… we have run sites like Real Pros and we have run sites like we were
drunken retards… we have had GFs and terribad fights, but always post ‘GF’ in
local as we warp off… I have made a mountain of ISK… and spent damn near all of
it… and I have had an absolute blast during all of it… Yea, EVE is a lot of
things… but first and foremost it HAS to be…

All For the Fun…

When all is said and done,the war over,the battle lost or won,when your ship has gone nova,you understand then…

When you turn ponderously for home,your Hulks laden with ore,like a citizen of old Rome,sweat and blood for the corp,you understand then…

When the smoke clears,and you’re back in the hole,you see your greatest fears,are not loss of control,you understand then…

When you were scared and shaking,webbed and pointed as you tried to run,when you realized YOU weren’t breaking,you understand now…

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

OK, first off the last 2 weeks or so have been dull… deadly, gods
damned dull. I have logged on most ervy day as usual, I have done PI, or not…
and when in the mood scanned all-the-things, or not… and usually no one on but
me. Oh occasionally we’d have a guy or two on TS… mebbe playing Warframe or
some such… and a few times had some of our newer members on, but in Empire
boofing around. I did get into a few nice TS sessions where I got to put on the
Sensei robes and teach, or at least knowledgeably answer questions. I prefer to
try to not just share info but to also encourage and share some of the wonder
and love I have for our game.

Something personally fun, day afore yesterday I found my first
Shattered Planet hole connecting to ours, N-Space or S-Space or whatevertehfuk
it’s called… one of the New 101 (Anoikis like) systems… At first I was all WTF?
While scanning and scouting I was also in Sensei mode teach PI… so after
jumping in, BMing the return hole and spamming Dscan, I tried to do a quick
scan of a planet to answer a current PI question and I was all ‘why in the
hells can’t I look at a planet??’ Then I saw ‘no moons’… Hrm, lots of Sleeper
Sites… no FF (Force Fields) which means no POSes… OH Hey!! I’m inna Shattered
Planet Hole!!! Schweet!

Warped to see my first real shattered planet and… it wasn’t. It was a nice clean round planet…
with a huge amount of (untargetable) asteroids(?) in close orbit (IE at ‘0’ on
the planet)… Well, disappointing to say the least. Also these new systems are
not available to our mapping tool… huh.

But the point is I was on pretty much solo when I was for the last
2ish weeks… I did PI, scanned… and usually logged after a bit… EVE has become,
for me, more a social game as I get older. Oh I still am ‘ok’ with being on
solo, just vastly prefer company is all. Anyhoo, so last night there was a
stirring on TS and corpmates were loggin on… some were playing Warframe but we
all decided to actually try and run sites together.

Earlier in the day I had soloed 3 sites in my Vargur… scary as I
had no backup if jumped, but it is Anoikis… and some days the scary for others is
me so I just kept spammin Dscan and nom nommed the sites for 180m ISK… nice.
Then people started loggin on and… we suddenly had hostiles in the hole. We
made a stab at killing a ‘Stero that was running a data site… and missed. In
the end there was enough neut/hostile activity to make us feel sites were not
on safely the agenda for the evening… <sigh>…

Then Sov, out scanning and scouting as usual says… “Hey guys…” “I have an idea… a really, really BAD idea.” “I’m sure it is just a terrible idea…” and you can just hear him
grinning… OH HELLS YES!!! Both Endy and I were all like “Cool, say no more, say no more…” and “What ship should I be in?” and “What?
Where? How? Can we keel it? them?” Seems in the C2/Hi right next door we
have a POS… defended by 6 Cruise Missile Batteries and… nothing else. Nothing?
Nothing, no other defenses at all, huh, really? And an Orca, Itty, ‘Stero,
Probe are just floating inside… and while the Orca is manned, it seems to be
AFK.

Hmm. We discuss the potential DPS and such of 6 BS sized Cruise
Missiles inna hole and decide to try it. First off Sov has me get a Med T2 bubble for the Hisec hole in the C2… At the hole, I align to the target POS and anchor it as close to the hole as bubble mechanics will allow… and the hole is nicely covered. So we have a cloaky scout, x2 DPS Ishtars
and me inna Scimmy for logi. We jump in warp to and land, I start reps and the guys start in on the
CM Batteries… and the CM Batteries start in on us… and… huh, nothing. I mean
the barest, faintest scratch of red appears in shield, then gone to reps… after
a minute Sov says, “Tur, drop reps.”
So I do… that bare, faint scratch of red becomes a slightly more bold, faint
scratch of red… and that’s it.

I reship to a Prophesy and we go to work on taking down the missile
batteries and even though I get focus fire a few times, I never go deeper than
50% shields, and I’m armor fit… needless to say, the CM Batteries are incapped
in relatively short order. With the meager LOLable defenses down, we go to work
on the POS itself because Sov is of a mind that this thing (1) may have been just
setup and (2) may have been setup by guys who just possibly may not have
stronted it… we decide to shewtz it enough to see if it goes into reinforced
and in the meantime see if we can get some kills or a fight outta these guys.

We continue ops… and the Probe suddenly warps out directly to the
hisec hole, which is not in dscan range of the POS BTW… and he get caught in
the bubble and Sov deals with it, killed and podded out. We continue
ops. A few more guys join us over the course. After a while a Tengu logs in,
lands in the POS… boofs around a bit and eventually warps off directly to the
Hisec and like the Probe, gets trapped in the bubble, killed and podded out.

Now Sov calls for a bubble on the POS, I go get another Med T2 and drop in in line with the hisec hole and just behind our guys, the edge of the bubble was like 20km off the POS. Ok so the guy in the Orca wakes up and jumps into a Gnosis and
eventually tries to escape with what could potentially be a neat trick. He
warps off in the direction of the hisec hole and we follow… he lands 100km high
from the bubble, drops a Mobile Warp Unit and starts anchoring…Hmmm… we wonder
if this will work, can the MWU warp him into the bubble deep enough to jump
before we kill him? Or will he get stopped at the edge as any ship in warp
does? Sov sends Endy to burn hard and sic his droans on it and kill the MWU
before it can be activated… done and the
Gnosis warps off… and gets trapped in the bubble back at the POS… we get tackle,
those of us on the hole warp back and… he is killed and podded out.

The op continues and we finally hit reinforced. OK, so they did
have stront and enough to give it a one day plus 17 hour timer… Now we are
deciding whether or not to make it an actual op, not just a ToO (Target of
Opportunity) and stay for the timer to see if (1) we get a fight and (b) if we
take down the POS, what might drop… So we're going back n forth on this when...Sov finally gets into a convo with
these guys… seems they are Lithuanian… and no one present speaks Engrish.
So Sov is doing a Google Translate convo in Lithuanian to poor English to incomprehensible Lithuanian… (gentle reader just
imagine the hilarity…). To make a longish and LOL filled story short… we end up
offering a 1.5b ISK ransom… and they accept… and they pay. OMG!! And it is at this point that Endy says… “Now I feel dirty.” LOL!

So once we have the ISK, I start taking down the bubbles and we
group up on our home hole and when Sov says we're good, we jump back, warp to
the POS and start winding down. A little bit later we are all sitting around
laughing and discussing the op when Endy calls out, “Astero on scan.” Sov replies that it’s one of the guys from the
corp we just spanked… He gets the guy in TS and is talking him through what
went wrong and why and how to avoid it in the future, and he invited them to come see our POS setup, all deathstarry n all (inna cloaky) and is sharing with them the Tao of Holes… this is how we roll.

So, why did we attack them? Well, one answer would be the EVE
standard… “They was home.” The other would be, and is, because they needed it,
and better us than some other group who would not have respected the ransom and
who would not have stayed and helped them learn how to make their way, find
their fortune and live and die in Anoikis.

My beloved Anoikis is a place of very high risk and equally high reward, a
place of imminent danger where sometimes I have a really bad day… and sometimes… I am
the really bad day that others have… =]

Them as what follow me...

Graphiti...

Round and round we go...

Fav Post Bytes...

"Maybe we're not that different after all and I have my own reality to get to grips with."Absence of Substance

Now THAT is wisdom...

We are, each and alone, the absolute center of our subjective 'verse... this is the way of life.To see another's POV as if it were your own... this is the way of truth...To allow that some others have POVs you cannot and will never understand, and yet accept them as they are, this is the way of acceptance...To kill them all without rancor or anger, but in brotherhood... this is the way of EVE.

This Is What We DO!!!

POD Locked

We're Soooo Bad at Hisec!

New Odysseyt Wormhole Jump Animations

EVE Forever, the Second Decade

EVE Easter Egg

Quafe's The One

Negato:

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